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Agate Cruller or Potato Frier

A fried sweet dough made with sugar, butter, sour cream, eggs, baking soda, nutmeg, and fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Agate Cruller or Potato Frier

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix together sugar, butter, sour cream, eggs, baking soda, and grated nutmeg until smooth.

  2. Heat lard in a deep pan until hot.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into the hot lard and fry until golden brown.

  2. Remove from lard and sprinkle with sugar before serving.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness to the fried dough.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour cream's acidity to produce gas that lightens the dough.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and tang, and its acidity activates the baking soda.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the surface brown in the hot fat.

The step that matters

Frying the spoonfuls in hot lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the dough absorbs fat and turns greasy before it browns. If it is too hot, the outside darkens while the center stays raw. Steady heat gives a golden crust and a cooked interior.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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